James's Journal

In my increasing radicalisation around the us/them way that society works ("us" being people, "them" being business interests), rubbish like this doesn't help:

"This obviously is a bad day for rights holders," said Daniel Geey, competition and EU regulatory expert at Field Fisher Waterhouse law firm.

"Fifa and Uefa argued that the listing legislation constrained their ability to sell the broadcasts at the maximum commercial level to the widest possible selection of broadcasters."

LET ME REPHRASE THAT FOR YOU:

"This obviously is a great day for fans of sport," said James, who is probably not a right-wing pro-business cock.

"Everybody who isn't a huge multi-national profit-driven corporation masquerading as a sports federation argued that retaining the protected status of the event allows the sport to reach the widest possible selection of viewers."

I mean seriously, when FIFA and UEFA are more interested in obtaining the maximum return for selling rights than they are in promoting the sport to the widest possible audience, then they're no longer operating in the best interest of the sport.

Any investment in sport they might make with the extra money would be far outweighed by the damaging effect of further reducing (and skewing towards the wealthy) the public's exposure to the best sporting events. Something here is broken...